As Shakira Martin is elected this week as the next president of the National Union of Students (NUS), it is clear that NUS has received some bad press of late.

Durham student Tom Harwood’s challenge to Malia Bouattia for the NUS presidency on an ‘anti-NUS’ platform is the latest in a line of attacks in recent years criticising the NUS for being “moribund” and unrepresentative of mainstream students’ interests and concerns.

These criticisms – levelled both within and outside the student movement – are said by the NUS’s opponents to reflect a broader disaffection among today’s students with the union’s progressive left agenda.

Much of this comment has tended to simplify the NUS’ work, as well as drawing attention away problematically from the organisation’s undoubted and significant achievements in a range of important policy areas.

For those who remain supportive of the NUS’ broad commitment to a progressive left concern for social justice there is a particular need to keep front and centre the organisation’s tangible contributions to equality and diversity concerns, including some real success stories in the sphere of feminism and women’s rights. (more…)

The Conversation blog recently published an article authored by Rebecca Reilly-Cooper of Warwick University, titled: Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender.[1] They then invited me, as a Trans woman, to offer an alternative perspective. However, the Conversation were not happy to publish my article as written, because, as they put it, it takes the form of a ‘take-down.’ Instead, they encouraged me to rework the article as a stand-alone piece. To be fair, they had been clear about this from the outset. However, having read Reilly-Cooper’s article which, in my view, possesses neither of the Conversation’s cornerstones, academic rigour or journalistic flare, I considered a ‘take-down’ to be the only appropriate response, other than, of course, simply ignoring it. Anything else, in my view, would confer legitimacy on a position I consider to be both politically and ethically bereft. (more…)

Perhaps the drafters of the change to the politics syllabus should read Mary Wollstonecraft’s first book, “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters”, which promotes female education and encourages mothers to teach their daughters. The removal of the feminist voice from the syllabus may mean the silencing of lessons passed down from generations before who struggled for equality.

Snapshots of law, gender and sexuality news from the past couple of weeks.

Supreme Court Decides on Fraudulent Divorce Case

Catherine Ravenscroft, Durham University

On 14th October 2015, the Supreme Court handed down judgement in the landmark case of Sharland v Sharland. This case concerned the division of assets upon divorce where one party, in this instance the husband, has fraudulently misled the court as to their future financial plans. Mr Sharland owned shares in a company which he told the Court he had no intention of selling. Mrs Sharland signed a consent order on the basis of this assertion. However, during the court hearing, it was discovered that Mr Sharland did indeed have plans to sell his shares, which would significantly affect the claim which Mrs Sharland advanced. She appealed to the Supreme Court on the basis that the consent order should be sealed. It was unanimously held that ‘fraud unravels all’ and the consent of Mrs Sharland was found to be vitiated by the fraudulent behaviour of her husband. The consent order was, thus, set aside.

The importance of this decision is to be found in its consequences. The decision of the Supreme Court has allowed Mrs Sharland to return her claim to first instance and have its value reconsidered by the courts. Although the full significance of this decision may not be felt for some time, it appears to create significant scope for the re-opening of divorce settlements on the basis of fraud. In contrast, there are also concerns that this decision may open the floodgates to couples attempting to revisit divorce agreements.

Last month Russia enacted a new law effectively banning people with certain illnesses from driving. Within the listed illnesses are those viewed as “personality and behaviour disorders”, for example transsexualism and other “disorders of sexual preference”.

The move was justified by the Russian government on the basis of a need to reduce the high rates of traffic accidents occurring each year. The country currently has some of the worst figures for road accident fatalities in the world and it is believed that stricter controls on those given the opportunity to drive will make the roads safer.

Nevertheless, the Act has received international criticism due to its potentially detrimental effects on the transgender community. Jean Freedberg, of Human Rights Campaign Global, argued that the ban is “simply another example of the Russian government’s increased campaign of persecution and discrimination against its LGBT population”. Like other critics, Freedberg fails to see the logic behind connection that the Russian government has drawn between gender identity and driver ability. As Shawn Gaylord, of US-based Human Rights First, argues, “banning people from driving based on their gender identity or expression is ridiculous”. He also expresses concerns that it could deter transgender people from seeking mental health services due to a fear of losing the right to drive.

This special issue addresses international interdisciplinary perspectives on different aspects of crimes of clerical child sexual abuse. Despite almost three decades of related public inquiries and high profile courts cases internationally, scholarly understandings of clerical child sexual abuse remain underdeveloped and under-theorised. Following issues raised at a 2013 Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences workshop held at LaTrobe University, on Religion and Sexual Politics in Postsecular Australia, we invite scholars from a range of disciplines including (but not limited to) law, criminology, history, gender studies, theology and psychology to submit papers engaging with the ways in which crimes of clerical child sexual abuse have been understood and responded to by law, the justice system, religious organisations, and state representatives, over time. By focusing on this critical area of legal and cultural history, we aim to shed light on questions relating to how clerical sex offenders have been understood and treated by the courts; the ways in which developing discourses of child sexual abuse influenced legal outcomes; the role of feminism in shaping understandings of clerical child sexual abuse; and the centrality of emergent survivors’ voices to revealing the contemporary global crisis in clerical child abuse. The AFLJ seeks to focus upon scholarly research using critical feminist approaches to law and justice, broadly conceived. As a critical legal journal we publish research informed by critical theory, cultural and literary theory, jurisprudential, postcolonial and psychoanalytic approaches, amongst other critical research practices. Articles are limited to 8000 words. Prospective contributors are invited to discuss any proposed submissions with an Editor. (more…)

Máiréad Enright is a lecturer at Kent Law School and is completing a PhD at University College Cork which examines the legal treatment of questions in Muslim divorce practice in the UK and the United States from the perspective of a multiculturalist feminism. This post is cross-posted from humanrights.ie with permission and thanks.

The High Court handed down judgment in PP v. HSE today. The Irish Times provides a useful summary here. P., who was 15 weeks pregnant, died on December 3rd, but her body was subjected to medical processes to ‘facilitate the continuation of maternal organ supportive measures in an attempt to attain foetal viability’ for several more weeks. We call the experimental treatment her body received ‘somatic care’. ‘Somatic care’ seems a benign phrase, but it involved a tremendous amount of intervention designed to postpone the inevitable collapse and decay of P.’s other organs following the cessation of blood flow to her brain, thereby sustaining the pregnancy. Medical evidence given in court made clear that the eventual effects of these interventions on her appearance, and the consequent distress to her family, undermined her dignity in death. Nevertheless, doctors in both hospitals where she was treated apparently believed that the law required them to follow this unusual course of action, given that the foetus still had a heartbeat. By the time the case came to court, P.’s body was deteriorating rapidly. There was no real prospect that, even if treatment were continued, the pregnancy could be maintained until viability. Her family and partner wanted the somatic treatment discontinued, and her father applied to the court for this purpose. This morning, the High Court exercised its inherent jurisdiction and authorised P.’s doctors to discontinue treatment, at their discretion.